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Money can't buy happiness goes the old adage, but if it could Amancio Ortega would be floating on cloud nine.

Ortega is a relatively obscure 76-year-old retail magnate and founder of the Spanish company Inditex SA. Inditex owns and operates various clothing brands with over 5,402 stores around the globe; the crown jewel of Inditex is Zara, which has over 1,600 store locations.

Between January and October of 2012, Ortega earned more than $18 billion -- that's around $66 million a day. During this short period he usurped Warren Buffett to become the third wealthiest person in the world with a net worth valued at $53.6 billion.

Ortega was born to a impoverished railway worker and had to drop out of school at 13 to work. He began as a delivery boy for a clothing shop and worked his way up to become a salesperson. While working retail Ortega had the idea to sell inexpensive versions of quilted bathrobes, claiming it was unfair that only wealthy woman could afford to dress well. He used this as the founding principle behind the rest of his retail ventures and built his empire on top of it.